Exciting tips

Is there an app icon on your KDE Linux desktop that doesn’t look right? Are you looking to edit it to make a change? Follow this guide to learn to how edit program shortcuts in KDE Plasma 5.

Method 1: KDE menu editor

If you’re on KDE Plasma 5 and need to edit some program shortcuts, the best way to go about it is to use the built-in KDE menu editor. Here’s how to use the KDE menu app to edit shortcuts on Linux.

Step 1: Minimize all applications to view the Plasma desktop. Additionally, close all open applications, as you’ll be modifying shortcuts on the system.

Step 2: Locate the KDE Plasma 5 app launcher on the panel (it’s on the far left portion of the panel). Once you’ve found the app launcher, right-click on it with the mouse to open up the right-click menu.

Step 3: Look through the app launcher right-click menu for the option “Edit Applications” and select it with the mouse. Selecting “Edit Applications” will launch a program called “KDE Menu Editor” on the screen.

Step 4: In the KDE Menu Editor, look through the different categories on the left-hand side. They are “Development, Education, Games, Graphics, Internet, Multimedia, office, Science & Math, Settings, System, Utilities, Lost & Found, and Help (Help Center).

Click on the down arrow next to one of the categories. From there, find the application shortcut you’d like to edit in the KDE Menu Editor.

Step 5: After selecting an application shortcut in KDE Menu Editor, the app information will show up on the right. Look through the different columns “Name, Description, Comment, Command” and edit what you’d like to change.

Step 6: Once you’ve edited your application shortcut in the KDE Menu Editor, click the “Save” button on the top-left. It will save changes, and apply them instantly!

Method 2: Terminal

Another way to edit program shortcuts on KDE Plasma 5 is through the terminal. The terminal route is an excellent way to go if you want to make a quick edit, and don’t feel like messing with the KDE Menu editor, as it is a sophisticated tool with tons of options.

Editing program shortcuts in KDE Plasma 5 is done by editing individual “desktop” files in the “/usr/share/applications/” directory with a text editor. To edit any program shortcut on your KDE PC, start by opening up a terminal window. You can launch a terminal by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T. Once open, follow the step-by-step instructions below.

Note: we highly recommend editing program shortcuts on KDE in the KDE Menu editor if you are a beginner. This method is for those that have some skill with the terminal on Linux already.

Step 1: Using the CD command, move your terminal window from the home directory (~) to the “applications” directory.

cd /usr/share/applications/

Once in the folder, you can confirm it by running the pwd command.

pwd

Step 2: Inside of the “applications” directory, the terminal session must transition from a normal user account to the “root” user. The reason the root user is necessary is that program shortcuts can only be edited as root.

To transition from a traditional user account to the root account, run the sudo -s command.

sudo -s

Step 3: After gaining root access in the terminal window, run the ls command to reveal all of the program shortcut files available in the “applications” directory.

ls

Alternatively, if you need to find the name of a specific program shortcut file, run the ls command alongside the grep command to filter the results.

ls | grep 'searchterm'

Step 4: When you’ve located the exact program shortcut you wish to edit in the terminal window, open it up in the Nano text editor. To do this, use the following command.

nano -w program-shortcut.desktop

Step 5: Using the Nano text editor, edit the program shortcut.

If you are having trouble understanding what to do while editing, check out our tutorial on how to create new desktop shortcuts, it goes over what individual items in the program shortcut files are, which can aid in the editing process.

Step 6: After making changes to the program’s shortcut, it is time to save. To save your edits, press Ctrl + O on the keyboard. Alternatively, the Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut also works.

Step 7: Now that your shortcut is edited, you must close the Nano text editor in the terminal window. To do this, press Ctrl + X on the keyboard.

Step 8: Now that the Nano text editor is closed, take a look at the edits you’ve made to your program shortcut to ensure that the changes indeed saved correctly by running it through the cat command.

cat name-of-program-shortcut.desktop

Or, for better viewing, attach the more command as a pipe. It will allow you to read the file line-by-line.

cat name-of-program-shortcut.desktop | more

MicroSD cards are generally used with phones to increase their storage. They’re particular to Android phones though since iPhones simply do not have a slot for the cards. Since they’re meant to be used on small devices where so much hardware has to fit, they’re smaller and larger memory cards simply can’t be used in their place. If you want to read the contents of a MicroSD card, you’re going to have to do it from your phone. Out of the box, you cannot access it from your PC or laptop since it won’t have a slot for it. It does have a memory card slot and you can use it to read a MicroSD card on Windows 10.

MicroSD Card Adapter

In order to read a MicroSD card on Windows 10, you need to make sure that you have a card reader on your laptop or PC. If you don’t already have it, you can get one but that’s additional hardware you’ll need on top of the MicroSD card adapter.

A MicroSD card adapter isn’t expensive, in fact some MicroSD cards come with one all under $10. The adapter is universal so it will work with any and all MicroSD cards.

A MicroSD card adapter works somewhat like a memory card in that it can be locked. The adapter will indicate how it locks and unlocks so make sure that it’s unlocked, and then insert the MicroSD card in its slot.

Read MicroSD card on Windows 10

Go ahead and insert the MicroSD card adapter, with the MicroSD card in it, into the memory card slot on your laptop/PC. Since you’re connecting a new device, Windows 10 will install new drivers for it. It won’t take long. Once the driver has been installed, you can access the MicroSD card.

Open File Explorer and go to This PC. The card will be listed as a removable device. It won’t say that it’s an SD card, Memory card, or MicroSD card. You can get a clue from the icon for the device which looks like a poorly drawn memory card in my case but you might get a better one.

Since this is a storage device, you will need to exit it like you do an external drive. Inserting the adapter will add it to the USB devices menu in the system tray. Click the icon, and select it from the list. Once you get a prompt telling you that it’s safe to remove the device, you can eject the card/adapter.

When you’re downloading a file in Chrome, the Chrome icon in the taskbar, or Dock if you’re on macOS, will indicate download progress. This indicator is silent for the most part; it doesn’t do anything once the download is complete. If you’d like more obvious, hard to ignore, download complete notifications in Chrome, you can try one of two things.

Chrome native notifications flag

This is an old method and by old, we mean it worked one year ago. You should give it a try first since it’s a native option. Open Chrome and in the URL bar, enter the following, and tap the Enter key.

chrome://flags

On the Chrome Flags page, look for the Enable native notifications flag, and enable it from the dropdown. Relaunch Chrome, and check if you get a desktop notification when a download completes. Make sure that you’ve allowed Chrome to show notifications on your desktop. This is a setting that you will have to check from your OS’ own notification settings.

Download Notifier

In case the above method doesn’t work, you’re going to have to use an extension to get download complete notifications in Chrome. Install Download Notifier from the Chrome Web Store. When you install the extension, it takes you to its options page where you can enable audio alerts for a completed download, and also disable the downloads bar in Chrome, if you want.

You can leave both these options unchecked. The extension will work just fine without them enabled. Whenever a download completes in Chrome, you will see a desktop notification telling you the download is complete. This notification is going to be interactive. It will have two buttons; one for opening the file that was just downloaded, and one for opening the folder that it was downloaded to.

You can dismiss the notification, or it will go away on its own after a while. When you do not interact with the notification, it goes to the Action Center (on Windows 10) or the Notification Center (on macOS). From there, you can interact with the notification if you want to i.e., you can open the downloaded file, or you can open the folder it was downloaded to.

Again, Chrome will need permission to show you desktop notifications and these permissions must be granted through your operating system’s notification settings. If after enabling Chrome notifications for the desktop, you also start getting notifications from various websites e.g., Facebook, or Twitter, you will have to disable notifications for them from their respective site settings. You can go to these settings by visiting the website and clicking the padlock icon in the URL bar.

The mouse wheel can be used to ‘middle-click’ in browsers. The middle-click can do two things in most browsers; close a tab, open a link in a new background tab. The middle-click is assumed to only have use within browsers but it can do other things. On Windows 10, you can middle-click to close apps. It’s not immediately obvious because you can’t middle-click on a window’s title bar like you can with a tab. Here’s how it works.

Middle-click to close apps

This is only going to work for apps that can show a taskbar preview, and that add an icon to the taskbar when they’re running. This means it won’t work for apps that run from the system tray. It will work indiscriminately for desktop apps an UWP apps.

You will obviously need the app to be open. Hover the mouse cursor over the app’s taskbar icon and the app’s preview thumbnail will appear. Move the mouse cursor over the preview thumbnail, and then middle-click on it.

This isn’t a way to force close an app. If you middle-click to close an app and you have unsaved work, the app’s save prompt will likely block the app from closing. You will have to choose to save or discard changes, and then the app will close. The save prompt won’t jump to the front if the app is in the background.

Middle-click doesn’t do all that much in any app and it doesn’t seem like it does much else on Windows 10 either. This may have to do with the fact that a middle-click is a gesture/action that’s hardware specific. If you have a touchpad, middle-click isn’t the easiest gesture to execute on it. If Windows 10 were to tie one too many actions to the middle-click action, it would make it inconvenient to use the OS.

If you happen to be using Windows 10 with a trackpad, you can still middle-click though you’re going to have to figure out how to execute it. Fortunately, it’s not that hard to configure if you have a precision touchpad. Without a precision touchpad though, you have fewer options. You can always connect a mouse to your laptop.

The middle-click is an often ignored/overlooked action so much so that not many apps support it. If you don’t have a middle-click button to use, you’re not missing much. It is useful in browsers but outside a browser, it doesn’t do all that much.

The Sims 3 is the third entry into Electronic Art’s life simulation video game for PC. In the game, the player is tasked with managing a virtual house, filled with various house-members they’ve created. The game came out in November 2006 and is one of the best games in the series. Here’s how to play The Sims 3 on Linux!

Method 1: Non-Steam retail

The Sims 3 was released when PC games were still sold in boxes at brick-and-mortar stores. So, if you own a physical copy of this game, you’ll be happy to know that it is possible to install it and run it on Linux.

Note: the retail copy of Sims 3 runs pretty well with Wine. However, you may run into issues getting the DVD to launch the game. If this happens, you must install a No-DVD patch to run the game correctly. Check the official WineHQ post on Sims 3 for more help on running the DVD.

Installing Sims 3 on Linux via the physical retail version of the game starts by getting the latest version of Wine working on your system. To get the most recent Wine, open up a terminal window, search for “wine” and install it the way you typically install software on your PC. Alternatively, follow our guide here to learn how to set it up.

Once Wine is up and running on your Linux PC, it’s time to start the installation of the retail version of Sims 3. Follow the step-by-step instructions below to get everything going correctly.

Step 1: Open up the DVD drive on your Linux PC and place a copy of Sims 3 inside the drive. Then, press the “close” button to tell the DVD drive to read the disk.

Step 2: Let your Linux PC process the Sims 3 DVD and load it up. When the loading is done, open up the Linux file manager, and look on the left-hand side for the DVD drive. Click on it to access the content of the Sims 3 DVD.

Step 3: In the file manager, locate the “Sims3Setup.exe” file, and right-click on it. Find “open with” select it and click on “Wine Windows Program Loader” to run the EXE file.

Note: can’t find Sims3Setup.exe? You may need to enable hidden files in your file manager.

Step 4: Follow the Windows installer and install Sims 3 on your Linux PC the way you would on a Windows PC. When the installation is done, close the installer.

After the installation process is complete, open up your application menu, find “Sims 3,” and start it up to enjoy the game!

Method 2: Steam/Proton

Valve’s work with SteamPlay and Proton is a wonder, as it is making most Windows video games work flawlessly on the Linux platform. The Sims 3 is no different, as the game has a high rating on ProtonDB, and is very easy to get running.

Steam has had the Sims 3 available for purchase for a while, and if you’re unable to track down a retail copy of the game, or don’t own a DVD drive to install the retail copy, this is the only way to enjoy Sims 3 on your Linux operating system.

To start the installation process, ensure that the most recent version of Steam for Linux is installed on your computer. If you’re unsure on how to install Steam, head over to Pkgs.org, and click on “Steam” for the Linux OS, you use to get the app installed.

Once you’ve installed the latest version of Steam for Linux, follow the step-by-step instructions below to get The Sims 3 working.

Step 1: Sims 3 is a Windows video game, so you must enable the SteamPlay feature. To do this, follow our guide on how to set up SteamPlay. Be sure to enable it for all titles!

Step 2: Launch Steam on your Linux PC, and log into your account. After logging in, find “Store” in the main UI, and click on it to go to the Steam Storefront.

Step 3: On the Steam Storefront, find the search box, and click on it. Then, type in “The Sims 3” into it, and press Enter to run a search for the game in Steam.

Step 4: Click on “The Sims 3” in the search results to go to its store page. After that, find the “Add to cart” button and purchase it to add it to your library. Currently, the game is 19.99 USD.

Step 5: After purchasing The Sims 3 on Steam, click on “Library” to go back to your game library. Look for “The Sims 3” in your list of games, and select it with the mouse.

Choose the blue “Install” button to download and install The Sims 3 on Linux. When the installation is complete, click “Play” to enjoy the game!

Trouble-shooting

The Sims 3 should work fine through Proton and SteamPlay on Linux. That said, if you run into any issues, be sure to refer to the game’s ProtonDB page.

GeekTool is a macOS customization tool that’s been around for a long time. There are hundreds of different Geeklets available for it which allow users to quickly customize their desktop. GeekTool doesn’t force you to use pre-developed Geeklets. The app lets anyone create their own Geeklets if they know how. If you’re trying to create a Geeklet of your own but keep getting an empty properties window no matter what, there’s a problem with how GeekTool is installed. Here’s how to fix it.

Fix empty Properties window for GeekTool

Make sure that you’re running the correct, and latest version of GeekTool. This is the official download page that you can get the tool from. GeekTool was available on the Mac App store at some point but the official website does not link to it, and the links we found told us the tool wasn’t available in multiple countries. It’s safe to say that this is really the only way to get the tool.

Remove the tool from your system and use this fresh download to install it again. Once installed, GeekTool does not automatically move itself to the Applications folder. It also doesn’t prompt you, the user, to move it to the Applications folder. Basically, it runs from the exact same place that its archive was extracted to and this can cause the empty properties window to show up. Make sure that you’ve moved it to the Applications folder. Once you do, quit the app and run it again.

The empty properties window is caused by a problem with the GeekTool installation. The problem might be a simple and easily traceable one such as the app not being moved to the Applications folder, or it might be something else. Regardless, reinstalling the app will almost always fix the problem.

If you’re running a much older version of macOS, it is possible that the latest, stable version of GeekTool may not run correctly. If that’s the case, look for an older version of the app. It goes without saying that this won’t be easy. The official GeekTool website doesn’t allow users to download older versions so you’re going to have to find it on software repositories. It might just be better to update macOS however, if that isn’t an option and you do have to go with an older version of the app, make sure you download it from a trustworthy software repository.

Some Geeklets might require that you have the latest version of GeekTool on your system in which case, you’re going to have to use the latest version and if necessary, the latest macOS version as well.

Candy is an elegant, gradient style theme for the Linux desktop. It is colorful, and unique, and is unlike any other icon theme on the Linux platform. If you’re looking for a great new set of icons for your desktop and are sick of the popular themes, take a chance and install this theme with the instructions below!

Download the Candy icon theme

To get your hands on the Candy icon theme, you must download it from the Gnome-look Linux theme website. Using this link here, go to the official Candy Gnome-look.org page.

Once you’ve made it to the Gnome-look.org page for Candy, find the “Files” button and click on it with the mouse to go to the download section. Then, download the item in the list with the name of “candy-icons.tar.xz.”

In addition to getting the Candy icon theme on Gnome-look.org, it is also possible to download the source code from the project’s GitHub page. However, we do not recommend going this route to install Candy unless you are an advanced Linux user and know how Git works.

Extracting the Candy icon theme

Now that the Candy icon theme is downloaded to your Linux PC in the form of a TarXZ archive, you must go through the process of extracting the contents of the archive. To do this, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, when the terminal window is open,  use the tar command to extract the Candy theme archive fully.

tar xvf ~/Downloads/candy-icons.tar.xz

When the extraction process is complete, a folder with the name of “candy-icons” will appear in your “Downloads” directory. To view the contents of this folder, run the following ls command.

ls candy-icons

Install Candy icon theme

The Candy icon theme is fully extracted in the “Downloads” directory. Now it is time to install the icon theme to your Linux computer. To do this, open up a terminal window and use the CD command to move the terminal to the “Downloads” directory.

cd ~/Downloads

Now that the terminal window is in the “Downloads” directory on your Linux PC follow the installation instructions outlined below to get the Candy icon theme working correctly.

Set up for single-user

Setting up the Candy icon theme for a “single-user” means that only the user that the theme is set up on will have access to the icon theme. If you do not plan to give access to the Candy icon theme to any other user on your Linux PC, go this route for installing it.

To start the installation of the Candy icon theme as a single user, create the new “.icons” folder in your home directory with the mkdir command.

mkdir -p ~/.icons

After creating the new “.icons” directory, use the CD command and move the command-line session into the “Downloads” folder, where the extracted Candy icon files are located.

cd ~/Downloads

Once inside of the “Downloads” directory, use the mv command to place the Candy icons into the “.icons” folder you created earlier.

mv candy-icons ~/.icons

When the command is complete, you can run the ls command to view the “.icons” directory to confirm the files are there.

ls ~/.icons | grep candy-icons

Set up system-wide

Setting up the Candy icon theme system-wide on Linux means that every user has access to the icons, not just one user. To start the installation, use the CD command to move the terminal window into the “Downloads” directory.

cd ~/Downloads

Inside of the “Downloads” directory, use the sudo -s command to transition the terminal window into root mode. Do not use the su command, as it will take you out of the “Download” folder.

sudo -s

Once the terminal window has root access, use the mv command to place the Candy icon files into the “/usr/share/icons/.” directory.

mv candy-icons /usr/share/icons/

After the mv command finishes placing the Candy icon files into the system icon directory, use ls to verify that all the files are there.

ls | grep candy-icons

Activate Candy icon theme on Linux

The Candy icon theme is installed on your Linux computer. However, it is not in use on the desktop. To use the Candy icon theme on your desktop, you must change the default system icons.

To change the default icons on the Linux desktop, open up “System Settings.” Then, with “System Settings” open, look for the “Appearance” or “Icons” option, and click on it to set Candy as the default icon theme on your Linux PC.

Having trouble setting up the Candy icon theme on your Linux PC? Take a look at the list below to learn how to set icon themes on all major Linux desktop environments.

An RMSKIN file is how Rainmeter skins are distributed. If you’ve made a skin for your own personal use and you don’t intend to publish it, you don’t really need to make the RMSKIN file. The INI file can be used just as effectively. The benefit of an RMSKIN file is that it packages all the files that the skin needs in order to work. You never have to worry about missing a file when you use an RMSKIN file which is why, even if you don’t intend to publish a skin, using it is a good idea. Here’s how you can create a RMSKIN file for a Rainmeter skin.

Create a RMSKIN file

The Rainmeter app can create a RMSKIN file. You don’t need anything other than this one app to do the job. You will have to make sure that all the files for your skin have been moved to one folder. Additionally, the files must be placed correctly e.g., additional files that a skin needs must be put into a folder called @Resources. If you don’t create this folder, it is possible that the RMSKIN file that’s created will fail to install.

Once you have the folder set up, open Rainmeter and on the Skins tab, click the ‘Create .rmskin package’ button.

In the window that opens, enter a name for the skin, a name for the author, and the version number. Click the Add skin button. In the window that opens, select the ‘Add custom folder’ option and select the folder that you created for your skin earlier. Click Add to return to the main screen and click Next.

On the screen that follows, you don’t really have to change anything. If you like, you can change where the package is saved to but moving the file later isn’t exactly a problem.

Once the RMSKIN file has been created, you will then have to install it. This file is now ready to be shared with whoever you like.

Compatibility

When you create an RMSKIN file, you have the option to set minimum compatibility for the skin. This allows users to know if the skin will work on their system and with the version of Rainmeter they have installed. It’s not going to make the skin compatible with anything. That’s up to you to do. If you can’t test your skin on an older version of Rainmeter and/or Windows, always set the version you developed it on as the minimum version needed to run the skin.

macOS comes with some of the best stock apps you’ll find on any desktop OS. Its Photos app is unparalleled, and recent Macs that come with newer macOS versions will come with the iWork apps installed by default. This includes apps like iMovie and Garage Band. macOS has excellent apps for editing videos, and managing an extensive photos library and it stands to reason that it would come with a simple text editor that can create a text file.

The stock text editing app on macOS is TextEdit and when you save a document created in this app, it doesn’t present TXT as a format to save the file as. It will list DOC but not TXT and that might make users think the app can’t create a plain text file. That isn’t true. You need to tweak one little setting in the app to create a text file with TextEdit.

Text file with TextEdit

When you open TextEdit on macOS, it opens as an RTF editor. This is its default mode and in this mode you can apply various formatting styles to text. A TXT file has no text styles applied to it. As such, the file that you make in TextEdit has components that can’t be part of a simple TXT file which is why it doesn’t show up as a save option.

To open TextEdit as a simple text editor instead of an RTF editor, you need to go to the app’s preferences. The Preferences window has two tabs. For our purpose, the New Document tab is what’s important. The very first section on this tab is the ‘Format’ section and it has two options that you have to chose from; Rich Text, and Plain Text. Select the ‘Plain Text’ option, and then open a new TextEdit file. This time, it will open a simple text editing window.

The text that you type and save will be saved as a simple TXT file. You can change the font that’s used but that is a system specific setting. You cannot give the text a color, underline it, bold it, or strike it through. All these basic text styles will no longer work.

Although you cannot apply any formatting styles to the text, you can now use TextEdit to create all sorts of other files e.g., an SRT i.e., subtitle file, or a script, or any other file that’s basically a text file but with a different file extension.

Microsoft is in the process of rebuilding Edge. It’s now entirely based on Chromium which means it has the same features that Chrome does. You can install Chrome extensions to it, as well as Chrome themes. The original Edge had some useful features one of which was to set tabs aside. Unfortunately, the Chromium based Edge won’t have it since Chrome doesn’t have it out of the box. You can get the Edge Tabs Set Aside feature in Chrome with an extension called Tabs Aside.

Tabs Set Aside in Chrome

Install Tabs Aside from the Chrome Web Store. The extension will add an icon next to the URL bar. Click it, and you’ll see a plus button at the bottom right. Click it and give your saved tabs i.e., session a name. When you click the plus button, the extension will also show you a list of all tabs that are open across different Chrome windows.

After you give the session a name, select the tabs that you want to set aside, and click the Done button.

To recall the tabs you’ve set aside, click the extension’s icon again. The popup will list all the sessions that you’ve saved to it and next to the session name is an ‘Open All’ option. If you click the session name, it will expand to show you the tabs saved to it. You can selectively open these tabs. If you want to open them all, there’s a button to do just that.

To remove a session, click the close button next to it.

Tabs Aside doesn’t have much by way of settings yet. This is a fairly new extension and it’s under active development. That said, you can enable animations for it if you want. They’re disabled by default because they will require more system resources. Chrome already tends to use quite a bit of RAM and adding extensions increases the strain on system resources which is why animations are disabled to reduce any unnecessary burden they might add. If you have system resources to spare, go ahead and enable animations.

Since this is a Chrome extension, you can use it in the new Chromium Edge as well to get the Tabs Set Aside feature that Edge originally had.

The extension does improve on the original Edge feature. It allows users to select which tabs are set aside, and it doesn’t automatically remove a saved session when a user opens it.